Chapter 7

"Okay," Mulder said slowly. "So the new Syndicate is trying an old play. And since it's obvious we won't be fooled and you won't be fooled, I'm pretty sure what their next step is."

"Fine. What's our next step?" Kara demanded.

"You still have that present we gave you from our first close encounter?" Mulder asked.

"It's never left my side."

"Then stay in plainclothes and do what we discussed before." Mulder turned his attention to his earpiece. "First person to come up with an exit strategy gets a shiny nickel."

"You know, he's ridiculously calm considering where he is and that he has no superpowers," Caitlin said.

"He's superpower adjacent, that may be making him cocky," Barry said cautiously.

"Oh, that's not it," Cat Grant said. "I think some part of him is actually enjoying this."

"Seriously? He sounded darker than Oliver on a good day just a minute ago," Felicity said.

"And I've no doubt part of him is still there," Cat allowed. "But I know Mulder and Scully. They spent their glory years getting in impossible situations. For them, it was all in a day's work. Being in a scenario like that, they must feel twenty years younger right now, and that's without the adrenalin pumping through their veins."

"It does sort of overpower you when you're that close to death," Oliver admitted. "But seeing as they only have government training and twenty year old training at that, we might want to make sure they do get out of this alive."

"All ready got one," Cisco said.

'Mulder' and 'Scully' were opening the doors to the hotel when Kara lumbered over to them.

"Excuse me?" she slurred. "I got lost on the way to the Ginzu district. Do you know where the monorail is?"

The two 'agents' seemed genuinely puzzled as to how to deal with this. 'Scully' looked at her. "Look, ma'am, you should clear the area."

"I know." Before they could react, Kara buried the stiletto that the Bounty Hunters had carried in the back of 'Scully's neck. In an instant, she began to dissolve into the green base of chemicals that made up these aliens blood. By the time, Mulder could react; Kara was on the other side of the street.

"You didn't use your powers against us, traitor," 'Mulder' said.

"You have no right to use that face," Kara countered. "Well, not any of them, but especially that one."

"It makes no difference to me."

"I like to see the eyes of the villain whose ass I'm about to kick," Kara was actually feigning confidence. Both times she'd battle one of these Bounty Hunters, she'd been lucky to get away with a draw. She'd had to use strategy to kill the first one and escape unharmed. She didn't think lightning would strike twice.

"This will change nothing," ''Mulder' morphed into the Bounty Hunter. "You think because you side with them they will ever accept you? Our victory is inevitable."

"I can't tell you how many times I've heard that one," Kara said calmly.

"When the time comes, you and your kind will suffer before the masses."

"Can we get this over with? I've got actual villains to fight."

The Bounty Hunter looked at her. Then, as if triggered by the same unknown impulse, the two simultaneously charged each other.

"What are you talking about?" Dr. Ianelli, like everybody they chased down, was not happy to see them. "I've been circumspect in my methods. No one knows where I am."

"We did," Mulder told them. "And now, so do we."

Scully never liked it when her partner got cute; it often made their already tough jobs that much more difficult. "Dr. Ianelli, you've been collaborating with some very dangerous people. Right now, the only chance you have of getting out of this is to come with us."

"You couldn't protect me before," Ianelli countered.

"We've got help now." Mulder looked at his watch. "But how long that help will be effective is a matter of some debate. So I suggest you get what you need and stop arguing."

Just then, they heard a sound of glass breaking. "Are those the people who are looking for me?" Ianelli asked.

"If we're lucky," Mulder didn't bother finishing that sentence with the obvious conclusion. And we've never been lucky.

'Is the nickel from this year or adjusted for inflation?" Cisco told them. "Because I do have a way out. It's not a light load, though."

"Are they ever?" Mulder asked.

"Yeah, but most of the time, I'm giving them to Barry. Still want to hear it?"

"How many hostiles?" Scully asked.

"One down, and Supergirl's beating the snot out of the other." Caitlin said. "That doesn't mean you're out of the woods. Someone's called the Osaka police."

"Why is it that local law enforcement was never around when we did need it?" Mulder asked the heavens. "Only in America, I guess."

"I don't understand," Felicity said. "Isn't having the cops there a good thing?"

"Not when you're in country that was allied with the first Syndicate," Cat told them. "And somehow, I don't think it's going to be the real cops who show up."

"We'll cross the bridge when we survive this one," Mulder told them. "Which way is out?"

Kara had hoped that going toe to toe with the previous Colonist would make the next fight easier somehow, especially considering that she knew where his weakness was. But this Bounty Hunter was proving just as difficult to handle as the other fight had been.

For starters, she was having a lot of trouble just getting into the air. Every time she tried to get skyward, the Bounty Hunter would kick her legs out from under her. The previous fight had involved mostly brawn and very little brain; this time, he seems to be focused on the opposite.

Added to this was the fact that simply landing a punch on the bastard was increasingly problematic. She was fast, but somehow he seemed to be faster. For the first time, Kara wondered if there was some kind of hive mind among these creatures and that somehow the collective learned from the mistakes of one who fell. Mulder and Scully had learned so little of what powers these aliens actually had – granted, they were only human and these things were usually beating the crap out of them when they did.

There had to be a strategy she could take. Then she thought of one. It was going to be dangerous not only to her but far more so to Mulder, Scully and Ianelli, but it was her best chance at getting everybody out alive.

"I guess I was wrong about you," Kara said slowly. "But to quote that old earth saying, when the going gets tough, run away!"

And with that, she ran off a mile away.

"Um, not that I ever question your wisdom, but what the hell are you doing?" Cat demanded.

Even now, it was still difficult to stop the retraction of her stomach into her abdomen upon hearing her old boss' clear disapproval. "Is he chasing me?" she asked.

"No, he's just standing there. And now, he's heading toward the back of the hotel." Cisco said. "Where Mulder and Scully are headed towards in about a minute. Should I redirect them?"

"One-one thousand, two-one thousand," Kara muttered under her breath.

"Uh, Supergirl?" Caitlin said.

"By my calculations, I'm six seconds away," Kara said. "Let me know when he's just about to get them."

"We should warn them," Caitlin started.

"No." Oliver told her. "I think I know what she's planning. And there's only one way this'll work."

Barry clearly saw it, too. "They're going to be pissed at us."

"Comes with the territory." Diggle said.

"Fifteen years out of the Bureau, and they still haven't improved fire escapes?" Mulder muttered to himself.

"What were you expecting, a jet pack?"" Scully said.

"Scully, I may be approaching my official Murtagh moment here," Mulder said as they continued to climb down.

"You don't get to pull that card. This is officially our Lethal Weapon 4 moment," Scully reminded him.

"Next time we're in a scenario where younger costumed heroes are willing to do the leg work, let's let the younger costumed heroes actually do the leg work," Mulder said.

"What do you think Supergirl's right now? Getting a manicure? May I remind you that you insisted on us doing this part of the job?"

"I guess this display of youthful agility still isn't turning you on."

"I only loved you for your mind." Scully said fondly. "Anyway, this is the last floor."

Ianelli had been very quite as they worked their way down the fire escape, maybe because she was afraid of what might happen next, maybe because she was puzzled how her 'saviors' could be bantering like actors in a bad nineties romantic comedy. But as they approached the landing, she finally spoke up. "Did you two come with backup?" she asked.

"Yes" Scully said.

"The strong, silent type?" Ianelli asked.

Mulder slowly turned around. This was not how he hoped Supergirl's fight would go. "Scully, take Ianelli and run," he said slowly.

Scully didn't have to turn around. "Mulder, you don't have a chance against him."

"Barry, how long will it take you to get to the other side of the world?" Mulder said.

"Don't worry."

"This is kind of a worrying situation." Mulder had his gun out.

The Bounty Hunter was about to grab him, when a split second later there was a huge gust of wind.

"You might want to cover your face," Barry said.

Before anyone – particularly the Bounty Hunter - could react, he wasn't there anymore. One second, he'd been standing there; the next he'd begun to dissolve into a pile of chemicals.

Mulder leapt backward to see Supergirl calmly hovering above them with the stiletto still in her hand. "A little warning would've been nice," he said as he jumped over the railing and ran back a few feet.

"Warnings. Those went out with flip phones and modems," Kara said cheerfully, with none of the worry she'd been feeling scarcely a minute ago. "Besides, I heard what you said about carrying Scully."

Scully had a small smile on her face. "I think there now has to be a moratorium on short woman jokes in general."

Mulder shook his head. "It was bad enough when I had to deal with only Scully. Now, I'm beginning to feel like smart, short, powerful women have basically taken over the world while I wasn't working."

"Not quite the revolution I had in mine," Cat Grant said.

"Depends entirely on whose side there on," Scully said seriously.

"And on that note, I think it is in our best interest to get the hell out of here before we have to start answering questions we don't know how to answer," Mulder said. "I've been at the center of more than a few international incidents. Trust me; they're never as much fun as they sound."

"Are you going to explain to me what the hell is going on here?" asked an utterly flummoxed Ianelli.

"Sure." Scully told her. "As soon as you explain why the hell you've been working on something for the last twenty years that you know could be potentially dangerous to the world at large."

"Not to mention where you've been getting your funding," Mulder was back to being all business.

Ianelli looked genuinely ashamed for the first time since she'd opened the door to them. "It's a long story," she said slowly.

"Not that long." Mulder said. "We know where it begins. And I know how it's supposed to end."

STAR LABS

6:58 P.M.

"I'm fully aware that after everything that happened in Boston, I should've let it all just stay theoretical," Lisa Ianelli told the assembled group several hours later. "I'd been warned of the consequences. I'd nearly died as a result and Jason was dead. But somehow, I couldn't let it go. I couldn't bring myself to believe that after everything that he and I had worked for should be for nothing."

"Even those Jason came from the future and told you not to?" Felicity was having the most difficulty accepting this part. It was like the Terminator coming back to stop Skynet and Sarah Connor deciding to help build it after surviving.

"None of it made sense," Ianelli said. "Jason and I never even believed time travel was possible; it was something out of fiction, not fact. Even when I confronted…him," Ianelli seemed unable to finish the thought. "It seemed impossible. Tachyons were beyond theoretical. They were imaginary."

"Did he ever tell you why he was so desperate to stop it from happening?" This was the part Barry was having the most problem with. The idea of dystopian future he could handle, but he had no idea why time travel wouldn't be able to stop that future.

Ianelli shook her head. "And whatever it was that he wanted to stop, I don't know if it has happened. Jason was very precise. He told me that the discovery of tachyons would happen in 2012. It's been four years and we're nowhere close to anything even in the theoretical construct."

Now was not the time to tell the story of how the Reverse Flash had ended up here, or the fact that he had done so a little more than six months after the events in Boston. Barry had done the math. The fact that the traveler from the future hadn't used those rules didn't mean they weren't possible.

"When did you begin working on the compound again?" Oliver demanded.

"I'd tried to move on after Jason died. I spent years researching other aspects of our field. I even considered leaving the field entirely. But I kept being drawn back to it. Thinking there might be some practical use to it. About four years ago, I began researching the compound again."

"In conjunction with Roush Technologies," Mulder said.

"It's not exactly like grant money is just lying around," Ianelli said earnestly. ""They offered me three times the amount that I could get at any reputable university. After everything that happened in Boston, there was still a stigma attached to what Jason and I had been working in."

That didn't give you a hint to stay away from it, Scully thought but didn't say aloud. "What uses did they see in it?" she asked instead.

"Medical research," Ianelli told them "The field of cryosurgery has grown enormous in the last decade. They said they were trying to find a way to make hospitals to do more advanced brain and cardio surgery using the compound. They were willing to provide technology along with funding."

"They weren't interested in what you'd done in Boston?" Mulder asked.

"Even if it I'd wanted to go back into that particular field, there's no way I could do the research." Ianelli reminded them. "Most of Jason's notes and work were destroyed when he…" She trailed off.

Mulder was tactful enough not to use the phrase 'kill himself' even though that was more or less what had happened. "And you hadn't held on to any of the research of your own?"

"I hadn't even looked at a lot of the files for years," Ianelli admitted. "It was like reading love letters from a dead fiancée. And when I did, most of it was years out of date. There was nothing there I could use. That's why I went to Japan."

"I still don't understand that part," Caitlin said.

Scully did. "Dr. Yonechi. You wanted to know what he was working on."

Barry remembered this part. "Why? You hadn't even met him before Jason killed him."

"Is anyone else's brain starting to hurt following this?" Diggle asked.

Cisco raised his hand. "And I was a huge Doctor Who buffwhile I was going to Harvard. This puts all that wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff to shame."

"Yonechi had been part of a team in 1997. They were working on advanced biochemistry. At the time, Yonechi had barely been working on that team for a year. I wanted to see if there had been anybody from that team who could tell me what they were working on. Anything that might've been vital to what Jason and I were."

"I can tell you that much from your notes," Dr. Tannhauser came forward. "You were looking for some kind of thickening agent. Something to bring the body back after it had been frozen."

Ianelli didn't deny it. "Unfortunately, nobody on the team had been working on anything remotely resembling that. The entire project was dealing with regenerative biology and trying to manifest its effects in humanity."

"Like a salamander growing its tail back once it was cut off," Cisco said.

"If anything, they were in a far more theoretical field than we were and they'd made even less progress. The project was dissolved in 2002 and most of the team had moved on other fields in other countries." Ianelli told them. "I spent the better part of six months tracking down any lead I could."

"Had anything suspicious happened to any of them?" Mulder asked.

"If you mean strange or unexpected deaths, only one," Ianelli told them. "Last year, Dr. Hiro Ishimaru, an exo-biologist died in an automobile accident in Kyoto. His blood alcohol was three times the legal limit. But ever since his brother died had died in a similar incident at the age of twenty-three, he'd sworn off alcohol."

"That doesn't necessarily mean anything," Joe West said. "People fall off the wagon all the time."

"I just said it was unexpected, not necessarily suspicious," Ianelli said.

"Um, I can think of at least one reason why it might be both," Felicity said. "I just did a Google. Ishimaru was the son of a Takeo Ishimaru."

"Why do I know that name?" Mulder said slowly.

"Because I do," Scully said slowly. "Takeo Ishimaru, aka Shiro Zama was one of several Japanese scientists from a unit known as 731. During the Second World War, they performed horrible biological experiments on unwilling human subjects right on par with those of the Nazi."

Mulder nodded. "And just like those scientists, the Syndicate imported them after the War to perform the same kind of projects that they had done at home. "

Kara was nodding. "You believed Zama was the man who experimented on you," she said to Scully. "Left you for dead, gave you cancer, rendered you sterile."

"Not just me," Scully said grimly. "I meant an entire group of women that he'd experimented on all of whom were dead within little more than a year. Not to mention the camp where they experimented on thousands of patients suffering from Hansen's disease."

"Hansen's?" Joe asked

"It's a fancy term for leprosy," Oliver told them. "I read the file. The Syndicate had all the subjects murdered when they were done with them."

"I really hoped that my family had gotten away from death camps when they moved here," Felicity said somberly.

"Scares the hell out of me, too," Kara acknowledged. "Did you know that Zama had a son?"

Mulder shook his head. "Zama was killed by a member of the NSA. He'd been presumed dead for more than thirty years when I found him, so I can't imagine anyone even assumed he had a family."

"Is there any evidence that the son was working along the same lines as his father?" Barry asked.

"We can't rule it out," Mulder reminded them. "If all our years tracking down this conspiracy have taught us anything, it's that the children are often more than willing to go into the family business, no matter how unsavory." He turned back to Ianelli. "You have any idea what he was working on that team with Yonechi?"

"I had a conversation with his wife," Ianelli acknowledged. "She told me three years ago, he'd begun working on this new project. Something having to do with retroviruses. But she wasn't a scientist and it was over her head."

"But apparently not over the Syndicate's, "Felicity told them. "Guess which company's Kyoto office gave him a huge grant in 2013."

"Roush," Mulder said.

Felicity shook her head. "Luthorcorp."

"I guess they're not even bothering to hide any more," Scully told them. "Did he have any notes? Any files?"

"Honestly, when I heard that Luthorcorp was involved, I didn't think I'd have to do any more legwork," Ianelli told them. "I figured that there might be some corporate back and forth. I didn't think they'd start chasing me across the country, much less try to kill me."

"Who's 'they'?" Oliver came to the heart of the matter.

"If I knew, I'd tell you. All I know with any degree of certainty is that whoever they are have been tracking me for the last week," Ianelli told them. "At first I thought it was someone from the Japanese consulate, but they've clearly been using American agents the last few days. I figured out they were tracking me through my credit card three days ago, so I've been using cash ever since then.. I thought I lost them until yesterday when a man got shot ten feet away from me. Why are the Luthors trying to kill me?"

"To be fair, only one of them is, and she's not working alone," Cat Grant told her.

"I know this has something to do with the X-File you were investigating twenty years ago," Ianelli said to Mulder and Scully. "And it's clear this has something to do with this conspiracy that's been in the news the last couple of months. What I don't understand is what any of this has to do with me and my research. Why would they kill me before I'd given them whatever they needed?"

"I wish I could give you a clear answer," Mulder admitted. "The old Syndicate worked to clean up their messes before investigation could bring it to light. But we only learned about your involvement yesterday. Best guess, the left hand never wanted the right hand to know what it was doing. When you started asking questions about another part of it, you must have set off an alarm bell somewhere."

"But I still don't know what the real purpose of this research is," Ianelli argued.

"That never stopped them before," Mulder turned to Cisco and Caitlin. "I need you to turn over everything you've worked on over the past year over to STAR Labs. If there's some connection to what the Syndicate is working on, my guess is they can find it."

"They're not exactly being subtle in their efforts to kill their targets any more," Oliver pointed out. "We need to get Ianelli to a secure location."

"Like the secret underground lair that gets blown up every other week?" Barry asked, with a raised eyebrow.

Oliver had the decency to look ashamed. "To be fair, sometimes there's more than a month between explosions," he admitted. "You're telling me the FBI would be able to provide a secure location?"

"There might be one or two that haven't been violated by someone in the Syndicate by now," Mulder owned. "And I don't think we're exactly reassuring the good doctor here."

"I haven't exactly been reassured since you pulled me out of that tank," Ianelli told them. "But it isn't like my options are that great right now."

"What about here?" Mulder asked Joe. "Has associating with the Flash meant that you've blown through most of your department safe houses?"

"Honestly, considering what we go up against on practically a weekly basis, I haven't exactly considered them secure," Joe admitted.

"Depends on the level of protection." Kara said.

"You sure about this?"

"I've managed to keep her safe so far; I'd like to try and see it through a little further," Kara told them.

Joe gave Kara an odd look – Mulder really hoped that he hadn't heard about Kara and Barry's yelling match earlier today yet. This was not the time to deal with superhero love triangles – a phrase that not even he had ever thought he'd ever use.

"What I said about not telling the heroes how to do their jobs goes for local law enforcement," Mulder said quietly to Joe.

"You trying to reassure me or cover your ass?" Joe asked sarcastically.

"Well, I've never really been in a position to do the latter, so let's just say I'm trying to reassure you." Mulder told him.

Joe shook his head and took out his cell.

"How thoroughly should we be guarding our assistant?" Oliver asked.

"Well, considering that the Syndicate has corporate, governmental, superhuman and extraterrestrial forces all at their disposal – and that's without counting makeup wearing psychopaths," Mulder said. "I think that we may need all the help we can get. So I figure the three of you should be enough."

Barry and Kara still weren't capable of looking at each other. Not a good sign. The tension was palpable enough that everybody could sense it. "You really think that's a good idea?" Felicity said what everybody was thinking

"Oh, we'll be there too," Scully said. "Since it appears Mulder and I have now reached the appropriate age to be babysitters."

There was harshness in that tone that none of the people who'd known Scully long enough had heard before. Even Oliver, who had spent the last four years suppressing his emotions in front of even the people he should have been letting in, was unsettled by it enough that he didn't automatically snarl back a response. "I don't know what you've heard – "

"We know enough," Mulder matched his partner's tone. "You have to understand, when it comes to personal feelings, Scully and I may be the most emotionally stunted people in all of law enforcement. We could talk to each other about aliens, werewolves and the theory of evolution, but we somehow were incapable of seeing what everybody who knew us for five minutes could. So if the two of us can pick up on what's going on here and the potential nightmares it could unleash, I'm pretty sure a pickpocket could figure it out, much less the Syndicate."

"So you're what, going to put us all through some team building workshop?" Barry asked.

The look of horror that appeared on Scully and Mulder's faces simultaneously was almost comical.

"No, no, no, no," Mulder said quickly.

"Getting all of your negative words out early?" Scully said with a smile.

"I would like to see the kind of ladder they could build only with office furniture, though," Mulder responded.

"The federal government, ladies and gentlemen," Cat Grant said. "You'd think they'd have come up with SOME variations from the corporate world?"

The tension was suitably broken. Joe walked back in to see everybody sharing smiles. "Did I miss something?" he asked.

"I have a feeling our federal friends have a lifetime of stories that we'll never get the whole truth on." Diggle said slowly. "You have the safehouse set up?"

"Soon as you guys are ready to secure it," Joe told them.

"I think it might make sense if I and Dig go in first," Oliver asked. "We'll look for checkpoints while our tech support sets up security."

Joe didn't object to this. He knew what Team Arrow was capable of. "Let's head out."

Oliver and Diggle started preparing. Joe started after them, and then paused. "Miss Grant, I know how inappropriate this'll sound, but is there something wrong?"

"About this entire situation or something specific?" Cat said brusquely.

"It's just every time you look at me, you keep blinking."

It almost seemed like the media mogul was trying to suppress a blush. "Sorry. It's just that you remind me of someone I briefly went out with when I was living in Boston awhile back."

"Policeman?"

Cat shook her head. "Pediatric surgeon. I know it's ridiculous, but the resemblance is striking."

"Believe me, I have heard of weirder things the past few years," Joe told him. "But I've never even been to Boston."

"I thought as much," Cat admitted. "It's just I had this conversation with Dr. Snow while we were waiting for Mulder and Scully to get back from Japan about how you were dealing with an alternate universe earlier this year."

"Apparently I was a lounge singer in that one," Joe acknowledged. "Gotta admit, there've been a lot of things over my head the past two years, but this one –"

"Does kind of blow your mind," Cat acknowledged. "Anyone, I'm obviously interrupting. Get back to protecting and serving."

Joe smiled and started walking away.

"You know, we've been dealing with so much crap the last couple of days, it's kind of slipped my mind," Cisco told them. "But our federal friends have been saying that we need as much brain power as we will superpowers."

Caitlin got where he was going. "You want to send a message to the other Harrison Wells."

Felicity knew about this part; Alex didn't. "That alternate universe you were dealing with earlier, you still have coordinates?" Felicity asked.

"Wells wanted to make sure we couldn't access it from out here," Cisco told them. "Which doesn't mean I still couldn't find a way in. "

Alex was still trying to play catch up. "So you'd what, try and vibe some kind of passageway or something?"

"That's the simple way of expressing it, but yeah," Cisco said.

"He's not going to be thrilled to see us this soon," Caitlin reminded him.

"He was never exactly thrilled to be working with us anytime last year," Cisco countered. "That doesn't mean he wouldn't help if he'd get the chance."

"I'm not going to tell you how to do your job, God knows that got tiring over where I work," Alex said, "but are you sure this is the best idea? We have enough people trying to deal with the current crisis in this universe. You really want to add a bunch from a different one?"

"This is the one area where I don't think there can ever be enough cooks," Felicity told them. "At some point, Oliver and Barry are going to reach out to some people that have worked with all of us over the past couple of years."

Cisco and Caitlin knew who they were talking about. "Oh, that's gonna be fun when they get involved," Cisco said.

"Brain, brawn and a lot of egos," Caitlin agreed. "But she's right. We are going to need all of the above. And, for better or worse, that does include Harrison Wells. Hell, maybe the invasion happened in his universe and they figured out a way to stop it."

"We should be so lucky," Cisco admitted.

Alex nodded. "All right. But tread lightly. From dealing with Superman, we already know about the existence of alternate dimensions. And the people on the other end, they sometimes can be anything but friendly."

"You're preaching to the choir," Cisco said. "Believe us."

VICTORY MOTEL

1:03 AM

The Victory Motel had been an open air drug market for several years before the narcotics department had made a major bust six years ago. Among the properties seized by the Central City PD had been the motel itself. The motel had been sold an auction to a couple who, in exchange for being able to rent it out at bargain rates, would occasionally house guests whose real names wouldn't appear on the register. The front had held up to this point, so Joe West had agreed to use it. It was a small hope of his that its cover wouldn't be blown by the Syndicate if they tried to get Ianelli.

Oliver, who had an ability to fade into the shadows that the Batman would envy, was watching from the rooftops one building over. Barry and Kara would cover the perimeter – Barry from ground level, Kara from the air. Oliver couldn't help but notice that both heroes were doing their damnedest to make sure their paths didn't cross even when one was a hundred feet above the other. The fact that even he could read the message into this made it clear just how tense things were between the Flash and Supergirl.

Diggle had taken over at the front desk. Mulder, Scully and Detective West were in Room 13 along with Dr. Ianelli.

"I have to ask, Joe," Mulder said slowly. "Is there some kind of mandate with every police department in the country that whatever place you use for protection is like one step up from a roach motel?"

"Central City doesn't exactly have the kind of budget the feds do," Joe said calmly.

"Oh, it's curiosity, not a criticism," Mulder said cheerfully. "As Scully and I would gladly testify to, the two of us stayed in probably every shitty motel across the continental U.S. over the years. This is actually a step up from most of them."

"I'll say," Scully said. "The sheets are clean, the walls are thick, and there's cable TV. By Bureau standards, this is practically a luxury suite."

Joe actually smiled at this. "All these years, every time the Feds tried to muscle in on an investigation, they always acted so high and mighty. That they were so above us lowly law enforcement with their thousand-dollar suits. Kind of refreshing to know at least some of them were working stiffs like the rest of us."

"The attitude comes with the job," Mulder said. "What they never mention is that you have to take in your own dry cleaning."

"And I imagine mine has had to have some interesting questions about some of the stains I've gotten on it over the years," Scully reminded them.

"That's assuming you can keep them," Mulder replied. "I had to change cleaners three separate times when I was in the Bureau. Blood stains they could handle; acid from a man-eating fungus, that was the last straw."

As tense as Dr. Ianelli was, she couldn't ignore that one. "A man eating fungus? Seriously?"

"Tried to reduce me and Scully to skeletons while it made our fantasies come true," Mulder said. "And sadly, not the ones I'd hoped for the previous six years."

Scully was about to respond with a remark about his magazine collection when Oliver spoke up. "A suspicious looking vehicle just pulled up."

"Considering the neighborhood, what makes this one different?" Joe asked, suddenly all business.

"The fact that the passengers are all wearing clown masks," Kara said quietly.

"Please tell me they're just here to rob the place," Mulder said.

"Any sign of the Clown Prince?" Diggle asked.

"Doesn't look like it, but he has a history of wearing masks over his face," Oliver said.

"Let's not wait for him to take us by surprise," Barry said. "This time, I'll lead. No sense waiting for him to drop another surprise on us."

"Barry, that's how he fooled us last time," Kara reminded him.

"She's right," Oliver said. "This time, I'll go first."

He thought Barry or Kara might object. "If he's there, don't listen to a word he says," Barry said instead. "Call us in."

"In the meantime, cover the back exits," Oliver said. "We all know how clever he is."

There were four of them in the car. Green Arrow let the first one get out before he shot one into his legs.

"I've giving you more of a chance then your boss ever will," the Arrow rasped. "Stay where you are."

Apparently, they were more afraid of the Joker than him because they all got out and started shooting at him, even the one who was still limping.

"Joe, you're the expert," Mulder said in a remarkably calm voice. "Do we rush out and possibly get ambushed or do we stay here like a sitting duck?"

"That depends," Joe spoke into his headpiece. "STAR Labs, you got any sign of something that is either inhuman or unfriendly coming towards us?"

"Inhuman, no," Cisco said. "As for unfriendly, I don't particularly like the fact that there's a limousine heading towards the back of the motel going twice the speed limit."

"Supergirl now would be the time to get down there," Mulder said.

Supergirl got to the back just as the limousine arrived. But the driver had better reflexes than most of them. He pulled up to a stop a full five feet before he could collide with her.

"Get out of the car," Supergirl ordered certain of who she would see.

She was wrong.

The window rolled down, and an arrow shot out of it. An arrow with a green tip.

"Silly hero." Malcolm Merlyn said. "A good magician never does the same trick twice in a row."